


The Headless Wizard of Bleecker Street

by TARDIStara



Series: The Wizard of Bleecker Street [1]
Category: Doctor Strange - Fandom, The X-Files
Genre: Brief mention of Deadpool, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TARDIStara/pseuds/TARDIStara
Summary: Mulder and Scully are called in when a headless, still living body is found in a brownstone on Bleecker Street and cannot be removed from the building.Wackiness ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

“Scully, you’re gonna loooove this one.” Mulder’s eyes practically glittered with excitement.

Scully’s eyes rolled to the pencil pocked ceiling. “Hit me.”

“43-year-old, white male. Found this morning. Headless and completely nude. Aside from no head, and clothes, there are no stab wounds, bullet holes or ligature marks to indicate why he’s on the floor. And no blood, anywhere. Said body is currently STUCK, adhered, attached, to the floor in a brownstone in Greenwich Village. And the icing on the cake; the body is still alive.” Mulder moved to the slide projector and flipped off the lights.

“Without a head.”

“Yep. Nothing touching the body but the floor and they can’t separate the two. They went to the basement, nothing underneath. No life support of any kind. But he’s breathing and his heart’s beating.”

The first slide lit the room.

Dark wood paneled room, bookcases, books, bamboo matting on the floor. A tall, pale, thin, naked, lightly muscled male body lay as if on a slab in the middle of the room. 

Next slide, opposite direction, but crouched down to get a good look at the neck. The neck looked as if it had just been sliced in one clean cut, with no signs of whatever had done it. All the normal veins, arteries, bone, and tissues were in place. Nothing was leaking. There was no blood on the matting on the floor. Scared looking cops with coffee stood in the background. 

“Now I said, no new marks on him, but he is covered in scars. Old scars, tons of those, especially on the hands. Looks like he went a few rounds with a mirror a few years back. New York PD ran his prints,” 

Third slide, a medical ID page “Doctor Stephen Strange, a former neurosurgeon, and a damn good one apparently. Had a horrific car accident about four years ago,” slide of a demolished Lamborghini hanging, nose down into the East River, “shattered both hands, massive nerve and tendon damage, underwent seven surgeries.” Slide of a unconscious and heavily bruised, dark haired man in a hospital bed with both hands elevated and skewered with with a truly amazing number of flexors. “He’ll never hold a scalpel again.” Mulder handed a folder to Scully.

She opened it and read the details of the wreck by the light of the slide. ‘Seatbelt and ridiculously expensive car saved his life, but couldn’t keep his hands from being smashed between the wheel and the dash of the car. Saved his handsome face though’, she thought absently. Unconsciously, Scully closed one of her hands into a fist. ‘Imagine’, she thought, ‘to be at the height of your career and then suddenly told you’ll never work again’. 

She skimmed the details of the seven surgeries. Very expensive and state of the art techniques. Some that hadn’t even been approved by the AMA yet. Scully vaguely remembered this guy was into bleeding edge technology, finding new ways to graft nerves that couldn’t be grafted, removing brain tumors that couldn’t be removed, spine repair that actually sometimes worked. This guy was the Hail Mary pass for brain and spine procedures on the East Coast. If you had the money, that is. Or was, she corrected herself. This guy probably could have fixed himself, if there were two of him and he hadn’t spent four hours hanging like a side of beef with his hands immersed in filthy water.

“He took off to Tibet after the last surgery. Lost everything. His apartment, cars, everything taken by creditors. Not a penny to his name. Shows back up a year later and takes up residence at 177A Bleecker Street. House is signed over to his name. House itself has been reputed to be “spook central” for as long as it’s existed. Whole selection of weird people owning it and odd occurrences happening around it over the decades. Our boy Stephen is fitting in nicely. He has a reputation for weirdness and funky robes and capes. Odd people coming and going all hours. House gets damaged regularly, is repaired by the next day. YOU try to find a plumber in New York that’ll turn up in 24 hours.”

“Money talks, Mulder.”

“No known employment. Has some odd connection with the Avengers, but nothing they want to talk about. Probably the ONLY reason Skinner’s letting us go.” Mulder switched to a slide of the outside of the elegant building. “Cops in the area are terrified of the place. Seems everybody’s got a spooky story to tell about a succession of ‘Wizards of Bleecker Street’. The area’s practically crime free though. NYPD got an anonymous call this morning and found the front door open. They did a full search of the house and found nothing. All sorts of swords and axes and weapons on the walls, none of them touched.”

“So they called and asked for you...”

“Well..”

Scully sighed, “when do we leave?”

As soon as you can get a ‘to go’ kit together. The cops don’t even want to touch the body.”

“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

They pulled their rental car around to the ally behind the brownstone. There was no graffiti. No strewn trash. The place was spotlessly clean. An odd sort of courtyard with a closed single horse stable was contained by a low brick wall that backed the building.

“A little weird for New York, wouldn’t you say?” Mulder pocketed the car keys and led the way around to the front.

A uniformed and obviously nervous police officer watched the front doors.

Mulder and Scully showed their badges and were ushered in.

The doors closed behind them with a dull boom. Directly ahead and up a giant three story stairway high above them, was a huge round window made of many hundreds of pieces of glass and designed around a series of arches making a rounded device. An odd sort of oriental grate and sitting room at the top of the stairs separated the window from looking directly down the staircase. However, tiny rainbows chased shadows as the sun shown through it and motes of dust danced. Most of the lights were out and the huge whole place had an eerie, absent feel.

“Body’s this way,” Mulder led Scully to the right of the stairway.

They entered a forty by forty study lined with old leather-bound books. There was a fireplace in one wall and large leather chairs flanking it. The lighting was discrete and expensive. A small oriental end table at the side of one of the chairs held a real Tiffany lamp. The body looked like a wax dummy on the floor, but for the gentle movement of the chest.

Scully pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, sat down her doctors bag and pulled out a stethoscope.

Mulder looked at the books lining the wall for a minute. “I’m gonna look around, you OK here? Need anything?”

“Oh, you’ll hear me if there’s trouble.” Scully said, not looking up. She put the stethoscope against the man’s chest. “Heart’s strong and steady.”

Shaking his head, Mulder left the room. Directly across from the small study was a huge library. Down the hall, a writing and scroll room. ‘Who keeps scrolls these days?.’ He wondered. To the left of the stairs he found a formal sitting and dining room, then another room containing a smaller, homier table next to a very clean and large modern kitchen. He opened the refrigerator. ‘Vegetarian,’ noted Mulder to himself, pushing the contents around and looking in the trays. He opened the freezer. ‘Likes ice cream, though.’ He shifted a few of the containers around and found nothing out of the ordinary there either. ‘Ben and Jerry’s Hulk a Hulka Burning Fudge.’ He noted, and closed the freezer. Next he rifled the cabinets. Normal, normal, normal, boring.

Grabbing up a tea towel from a rack, he headed back to Scully.

He gently knocked on the door frame as he entered as to not startle Scully. She was drawing blood from an arm and didn’t look up.

Mulder casually covered the Doctor’s privates with the tea towel.

Scully did look up at that. 

“No man wants his junk on display.” Mulder said. “I’m gonna go upstairs and have a look around. I was told the good Doctor has quite an occult collection. Wasn’t anything unusual in the fridge. Looks like he’s a vegetarian with a weakness for ice cream. The food’s all fresh.”

“I’m almost finished here. Blood looks normal. He has normal reflexes and responses to stimuli, if a bit sluggish. All in all, he’s pretty healthy for a headless guy.” She sighed and got up, labeling vials as she did so. “I’ll sit here a little while and let you look around and then I’ll go run these down to the New York lab.”

Mulder nodded and headed out again.

He walked slowly up the gigantic staircase and stopped at the second floor. Mulder took the right corridor first. The first room he opened was obviously a master bedroom done in various shades of dark blue and green. A queen sized bed, bed tables with Tiffany lamps, clothes cabinet, more filled bookshelves, large closet, a writing desk, full bath and shower. A faint whiff of a man’s cologne and aftershave. Various bottles and two expensive watches in cases on a mirrored dresser. Several awards for medical procedures. Next to the master were two generic guest bedrooms and across from them were four more. 

Mulder walked over to the left side. Again, the first bedroom was a master, but this one was in shades of red and orange and had more of a Chinese feel and smell to it. Japanese brush paintings were framed on the wall. Six more generic bedrooms led Mulder to think that this guy was used to large group shindigs. He went back to the staircase, walked up to the third floor, around the room divider, and right up to the giant window where he whistled at the view. Then the things on the walls caught his attention.

The walls were covered with what must have been priceless weapons, armor and some very impressive restraints that would hold a person solidly in almost any position. ‘Kinky’ thought Mulder, moving away to look at a cutlass with an emerald the size of a hen’s egg for a pommel. There were swords of every description. From fencing foils to giant two handed bastard swords. Axes, single and double headed. Maces, morningstars, nun-chucks, throwing stars. ‘Better than the armory at the Tower of London’, Mulder thought.

The floor plan of the third story was mostly openspace, with shorter corridors once again heading off to the right and left. Two small meditation chambers flanked the giant window. The floorspace between the corridors was filled with giant glass cases, the type most often used by art galleries or museums to display priceless treasures.

“You are kidding me!” Mulder said in shock and wonder as he stopped at one case labeled ‘The New Jersey Devil’. The glass-eyed, horse-like head stared back out at him. It stood about six feet tall upright on two horses hooves. A pair of fairly large bat wings were folded at its back and the two tiny forlegs had small furred hands. The whole thing was covered in black horse hair. Mulder examined it as closely as he could through the glass. If this was a Barnum Hokum it was one of the best he had ever seen. He looked around for a light switch and spotted a multi switch on a far wall.

Behind him a flicker of red swept into a darker pool of darkness.

Mulder turned on a few of the spotlights over the cases. 

He walked up to the one closest to the switches. “Dragon’s Claws, Scales, Teeth and Gizzard Stones” he read. The claws were huge, six foot tall, shining ebony black, curving gently to fill the case, four to a side. In the center, a glass shelf held the major canines, upper and lower, old ivory curving some three feet long arranged around a half dozen perfectly spherical blood red pieces of what looked like tiger’s eye. The bottom glass shelf held four rather ratty looking curved plates of something that retained a faint green metallic glitter. ‘Doc must have spent a ton of money on these humbugs. Wonder if he has a Fiji Mermaid up here too...’.

He saw a reflection of a vaguely rectangular red piece of cloth moving and spun round.

There was nothing. He chalked it up to nerves and ambled over to the next case, his gaze sweeping the room for movement.

In the next case, a frame held an oriental patterned silk cloak. It was well worn and carefully patched in places. Beside it in the case rested an impressive and obviously heavily used fighting staff bound with iron and caped with silver. “The Cloak and Staff of Master Lin” Mulder looked around. There were probably a half dozen cloaks and staffs enshrined. 

The next case held a huge book in a spiked iron cage and bound in spiked iron chains. 

“The Necronomicon”. Mulder made a disparaging sound. “Sure, it is. And bound in human skin I hear.” 

This time he heard a distinct flap before he spun around. “Is there someone up here?” He demanded in a loud voice, “this is Fox Mulder of the FBI!”

The flapping continued. Mulder pulled his weapon. “I’m armed. And authorized to use deadly force!”

A distinctly red something flew past the Jersey Devil and around the room divider.

“Freeze!” Mulder yelled, running around his end of the room divider, to the top of the stairs.

The red cape froze in mid air and settled into a human-like form, as if someone were wearing it.

“Mulder! Are you OK?” Scully’s muffled voice came from downstairs.

“Some really weird-ass stuff up here Scully!” Mulder advanced on the cape. He circled it.

It was empty. What was holding it up? He looked up—

The cape slapped the gun out of his hand and shot straight into his face. Before he could shout, it muffled his head and lifted him off the ground.

Scully came out to the foot of the stairs and looked up in amazement. 

And the cloak fell.

As it came tumbling down the stairs, it struck every forth one. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Scully could see Mulder’s muffled outline inside it. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled her weapon.

As they tumbled, Mulder’s face was freed for a moment. “SCULLY!” He howled. And went under again.

The cloak smacked Mulder against the stairs twice more before throwing him precisely at Scully’s feet and then arrowed off to the study containing the body.

“What the fuck?!?” Scully shouted.

“Follow that damn cape!” Mulder yelled. His nose was bloody, his hair stood on end, and the back of his jacket was torn. He looked like he’d been in an industrial drier. It took him two tries to get up, but he was running when he finally got his feet under him. 

They ran to the study.

The cloak completely cocooned the body leaving only the neck clear. 

“What the fuck?” Scully said again, slightly softer, “you were six feet in the air before you tumbled down those stairs! You should be dead!”

“It didn’t want to kill me.”

“It? Mulder, you’re crazy!”

“No, it could have suffocated me or smashed my brains out.” He took out a handkerchief and tried to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. “You saw that fall. I should be cat food. It didn’t even break my nose.”

He stumbled over to the cocooned wizard.

The cloak spat the dish towel into his face.

“Now that was uncalled for.” Mulder knelt and tried to pull a corner free.

The cloak slapped his face.

Scully fell to her knees beside him.

“Good thing you got your blood samples before this thing got here.” Mulder laughed.

“What happened, Mulder?”

Mulder got up and flopped into one of the leather armchairs. “Nothing upstairs but empty bedrooms, a bunch of P.T. Barnum Hoakum in cases and that—“. He indicated the cloak.

Amazingly, the cloak flipped him off.

Mulder laughed again. “It was apparently following me once I got up to the third floor. I challenged it, it grabbed my head, pulled me off the ground and took me down the stairs. Every hit was cushioned by the thing. Seriously, I could have bashed my brains out on a fall like that.”

Sitting down on the floor next to the body, Scully looked up at him. “What do you want to do?”

“I want you to take those blood samples in,” he pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to her.  
“I’m gonna stay here and see what the hell else happens. This is better than Disneyland!”

Scully got up and picked up her bag. “Want me to bring food back?”

“Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! New York gotta have!”

“Ice tea?”

“Of course.”

Scully sighed and left a still grinning Mulder.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then things got really weird...

Mulder got his bloody nose under control and looked down at the neck slice. It reminded him of the exhibit of the body that had been frozen, sliced into perfect slices and presented to the public under glass as an art piece. Gruesome and fascinating at the same time.

Then he decided the taste of blood in his mouth was really starting to bother him.

“Keep an eye on the Doc, Red. I’m going to get some tea. Thanks for not killing me.”

The cape waved at him.

Mulder got up and crossed to the kitchen. He noted the sun was starting to drop in the sky. 

He took the tea pot off the stove, rinsed it, filled it and put it on a gas burner. He went back to the cabinets and fetched a couple of mugs, some tea bags and some sugar.

As the water heated, he looked around.

Off to the left of the kitchen was a door. He resisted the urge to go check it out. Instead he walked back up the stairs and retrieved his gun.

As he walked back down, the tea kettle whistled.

He made himself a cup of tea and left the rest out for Scully.

Walking back to the study, he noticed the police officer on duty out front had left. He checked his watch. ‘Guess we’re in charge now...’

He resumed his post in the leather armchair. After a few sips of tea he got bored and decided to get up.

Mulder stared looking at the books in the room. He started near the doorway. An awful lot of them were about Eastern philosophy and medicine. Then there was a section on alternate dimensions and big picture books of other galaxies.

He turned to the right.

“Oh, you are shitting me.” Mulder gently pulled out a copy of Tolben’s Spirit Guide. He handled it reverently. He looked back to the shelf. “Oh, fuck me.” He pulled out a copy of “Practical Crypozology”. He took both books and went back to his chair like a kid with the golden ticket.

He set ‘Practical Cryptozoology’ next to his laptop bag and began leafing through ‘Tolben’s Spirit Guide’.  
The book was a hefty one, hand written pages with gorgeous illustrations. Mulder was practically drooling as he read.

The body on the floor breathed, the foyer darkened.

After about two hours, Scully returned with the pizza and a bag of drinks.

Reluctantly, Mulder left the books, realizing that if he got pizza sauce on them, he would most certainly incur the wrath of an angry sorcerer. Besides, he did want to find out what Scully had learned. They went to the small kitchenette, turned on lights and began devouring the pizza.

“Blood’s normal B positive. Not a thing wrong with it. No toxins, no high white blood cell count. Hell, even his cholesterols were perfect.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much here. Except..”

“Except what, Mulder.” Scully’s eyebrow arched.

“The Doc’s got books no-one else in the world has. Books I’ve only read allusions to, literally, in ancient manuscripts.”

“So that was what you were reading when I came in.”

“Oh my god, Scully. It’s like the grand unifying principal behind the paranormal. I’m not even a third into it and it’s explained so much of what we’ve seen and been unable to document.” He was grinning broadly as he finished his second slice.

“Where does that door lead?” Scully asked absently, pointing at it with a pizza bone.

Mulder was reaching for another slice. “I saw it earlier, but decided I’d better get my weapon back before checking it. Then, books, pizza.” He shrugged

“Was there a light under the door earlier?”

Mulder dropped the pizza slice on his plate and turned to the door. “No. There was not.”

A faint sound of people softly moving and soft speech came from under the door.

They both got up as one and moved up on the door.

Scully had her gun out and was in point position.

Mulder pulled his weapon and reached for the door knob “one, two,——. He slammed the door open on a waiting room as Scully brought her weapon round—-

—on an off white waiting room from an insane nightmare. 

Deadpool’s head was on a toddlers body seated in one of the seats, as it swung its tiny legs. He wasn’t wearing pants.

There were several other costumed people Mulder didn’t recognize and a few who just looked like thugs. They all appeared to have some sort of injury or other. Blood dripped like a ticking clock. Newspapers were quietly dropped.

There was one absolutely still moment where everyone simply looked at everyone.

And suddenly EVERYONE had a gun. There was even a raccoon standing on his hind legs holding a gun almost as long as it was tall.

“Neutral Ground! This is Neutral Ground!” A very young voice yelled and all the guns disappeared. The raccoon put his gun back into a holster on his back with a grumble and a grimace.

Spider-Man stepped into the center of the room. His arm was very obviously out of its socket. He cradled it against his chest as he spoke. “Neutral Ground, Miss.” He said again, this time directly to Scully who was the only person still holding a gun, and Mulder, having already holstered his, nudged her.

Scully refused to put her gun up. “Doctor Strange is in the next room with no head. I suppose none of you have anything to do with that?”

Almost the entire contents of the room emptied in a mad rush past her. 

“Pinch me.” Mulder said into the sudden silence. 

In the study, a commotion consisting of lots of swearing and slapping noises, almost certainly from the cape, roared into life.

A woman in a nurses uniform rushed back past them into the waiting room, ran down a short corridor, headed into a room and came running back with a rolling IV stand and several bags of solution.

This, Scully could understand. She holstered her weapon and followed.

Spider-Man walked up to Mulder, “first time to the Night Clinic, huh? Yeah, it can be a bit much.”

Mulder pointed at his out of joint shoulder. “Want help with that?”

“Oh, yes, please! The longer you leave it out the more it hurts.”

Mulder got behind Spider-Man, braced one hand on his back and grabbed his upper arm “you ready, kid?”

There was a sudden jerk and pop and Spider-Man rubbed the joint for a moment. “Thanks mister, my Aunt would see that and kill me.”

“Aren’t you a little young for the Superhero business?” Mulder smiled down at the obviously young man.

“I’m an Avenger!”

“Then why aren't you out there at their compound getting treated?”

The kid shrugged, “this is closer and faster and I don't get a lecture. What’s up with the Doc?” He walked past Mulder and headed for the crowd around the prone man.

“Everyone back to the waiting room!” The woman in the nurses outfit yelled. “Most critical get seen first, you know that. Back to your seats!”

The room started to empty as the nurse and Scully tried to convince the cape to unwrap an arm.

Spidey knelt down. He put a hand on Strange’s shoulder. “It’s OK, Cloakie, they’re trying to help him.”

The cape seemed to wilt a bit, but it did uncover one arm.

“His pulse and respiration are normal,” Scully said, as she assisted the nurse in putting in an IV. “As near as I can tell his heart rate is normal and his lungs are clear. How is he maintaining this state?”

“Are you a doctor? The nurse asked.

“Yes.” 

“Did you notice any other symptoms? How long has he been like this?”

“He was found right here naked and headless this morning. Oh and he’s stuck to the floor, so I have no idea how that cape got under and around him. That happened about four hours ago.” Mulder said, ruefully rubbing his nose and standing well clear of the women with needles.

The nurse stood up and hooked up a bag of saline. She laid out the other bags nearby. “I trust you can handle changing these?” After a nod from Scully, the nurse noted “Stephen will probably need feeding if he’s stuck like this for much longer.”

“Does this happen often?” Scully asked acidly.

The nurse looked up at them with sudden suspicion. “Who are you people and how did you come through the Sanctum?”

Mulder and Scully flashed IDs.

The nurse nodded curtly. “If you don’t already know, this is Doctor Stephen Strange of the New York Sanctum. Sometimes in dealing with inter-dimensional threats to the planet he leaves his body behind. Normally he notifies someone. To my knowledge this is the first time his head went with him and his body stayed.’ She absently stroked the cape ‘“he also rarely leaves The Cloak of Levitation behind either.”

The cape seemed to clutch the Doctor more firmly. The IV stand rocked.

She sighed and started back to the waiting room. Mulder, Scully and Spider-Man followed. “The Doctor is kind enough to allow a night clinic to operate out of some of his back rooms. I do most of the work, he occasionally helps out or does triage, but it’s not unusual for him to be gone from the Sanctum for a day or two without reinforcements coming from Kamer-Taj. You should expect someone soon.”

“Where’s Kamer-Taj?” Mulder asked. “Somewhere in Tibet?”

The nurse nodded “that’s where he trained and where his replacement will come from.”

They walked through the kitchen.

“But the Doc’s gonna be alright?” Spider-Man asked helplessly.

“I have seen him in worse condition.” She shrugged. “I have other patients to treat. Thank you for helping Spider-Man with his arm.” She said directly to Mulder. To Spider-Man she said, “I’ll make a notation in your charts. You should be more careful.” She shut the door behind her.

Scully and Mulder looked at Spider-Man.

“Can I have a slice of that pizza? I can trade it for some of the Doc’s ice cream stash...” He offered.

Scully and Mulder each took an arm chair and Spidey sat cross legged on the floor next to ‘Cloakey’ and the Doctor. They all ate their ice cream in silence.

“I wish I’d known he was in trouble.” Spider-Man said, his mask pulled up to his nose so he could eat.

“How intelligent is that cape?” Mulder asked.

“It’s a cloak. Cloakie is what she’s usually called.”

“She?”

“The Doc always refers to her as a she. She’s smarter than your average High Schooler. I’ve seen her save him several times. Oh, and she can fly.”

“Bullshit.” Mulder said.

“I swear, she wraps around him and up they go. She can even pick other people up and fly off with them.”

Mulder took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. The handkerchief came away bloody.

“She bloody your nose?” Spider-Man asked

“She picked me up and threw me down the stairs!”

“Well, then you know she’s smart AND can fly! Anyone falling down those stairs would be smashed into a hundred pieces. All you got was a bloody nose.” Spider-Man got to his feet, and picked up his ice cream bowl. “I gotta get going.” He took Mulder’s and Scully’s. “Can you two sit with him tonight? There’s a guest room right down the hall, you could do it in shifts.”

“Got school tomorrow?” Scully gently teased.

Spider-Man yanked down his mask but it wasn’t fast enough to miss the red flush of his lower face.

“I can come back tomorrow and I can get the Avengers to take over if you like.”

“We’ll watch him tonight.”

“Great! I’ll call the Avengers let them know what’s going on. Wong may come take over, so don’t freak if there’s this glowey portal thingie and a grumpy Chinese guy shows up.”

Mulder’s eyebrows made a run for his hairline “We’re perfectly fine with grumpy Chinese guys coming through magical portals, aren’t we Scully?”

Somehow Scully kept a straight face. “We can handle that, I think. Anyone we should watch out for?”

“Anybody Cloakie doesn’t like, but since the guys from the Night Clinic saw the Doc, they’ll put the word out and keep the house watched 24/7, so you should be fine.”

“Anything else?”

“I really, really wouldn’t go back upstairs. Some of those relics are super dangerous. Even touching one could be really, really bad. And the Doc’s got all his magic potions and ingredients up there. The whole area is magically booby trapped.”

“We will stay right here.” Mulder said solemnly. 

“Great! Wow, for FBI you two are pretty cool. All the others I’ve been around were total dicks.” He held up his hands. “No offense.”

“We’ve had similar problems with our fellow agents.” Mulder said wryly. “Most of them are major dicks.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

After the third yawn from Scully, Mulder looked at his watch. It was three A.M. “Why don’t you stretch out on the guest room bed around the corner? I promise to scream like a little girl if anything happens.”

Gently chuckling, Scully got up, ruffled his still wild hair and left the room.

Mulder got up, changed the IV bag and then went back to his book.

Three more hours passed and nothing happened. Somewhere in the huge house a grandfather clock chimed. Now that the City had calmed somewhat, Mulder could finally hear it, and had been relying on it to remind him to regularly check the body at his feet. There was no change other than the steady drip, drip, drip of the IV.

Mulder decided he should look in on Scully and find a bathroom. He gently opened one door and saw Scully curled up with a comforter over her. He went to the next room and used the bathroom there. As he was washing his hands, he noticed the residual blood on his face and the extreme look his hair had attained. With some water from the sink he cleaned up as best he could and tried to comb his hair back into place. Looking and feeling a bit better, he walked down the hall on the way to the study.

And that’s when he saw the swirl of what looked like fire in the foyer.

Mulder stepped out of the hallway and watched in awe as a ring of rotating sparks formed before him. It seemed to solidify and a stocky Chinese man in robes stepped from a well lit courtyard through it.

“You must be Mulder.”

“And you must be Wong.”

The two shook hands.

“What’s the damn fool done now?” The portal dissipated behind him.

“Well, he went somewhere, took his head, and left his body here.” Mulder indicated the study behind him.

“Typical.” Wong grumbled.

They walked to the study.

Wong looked down at the body and shook his head. He started making odd gestures and light patterns in delicate mandalas appeared suspended in mid air.

Mulder tore himself away and ran to wake Scully. 

They returned in time to see a large red disk of interlocking, slowly rotating mandalas bisecting and moving slowly up the body. Scully was reminded of a CAT scan. The beauty of the thing and it’s complete lack of anything obviously producing it took her breath away. She was completely at a loss for words.

The disk stopped abruptly at the missing head.

“The fool’s transported himself but left his head behind.” Wong growled.

“And his clothes?” Mulder asked amusedly. “His cloak seems quite attached to him. The rest of his clothes, not so much”

“He does occasionally leave his cloak behind if the situation warrants it. But he’s not prone to nudity. It might give us a clue as to where he’s gotten to.” Wong abruptly left the room and headed up the stairs. While he was gone, Mulder surreptitiously slipped the two books he had pulled from the library shelves into his laptop bag. He raised a finger to his lips when he looked over at a furious Scully.

Wong bustled back in with a mortar and pestle, grinding furiously. He spoke in a language that was not Chinese and not Russian, but sounded like a softer version of the two. Cloakie unfurled like a flower, leaving the naked body of the Doctor totally exposed. Wong took a handful of the resulting powder from the mortar and with a few harsher sounding incomprehensible words, threw it across the body.

The body began to glow a dull ugly green with bright yellow spots. A smell of decay wafted into the air.

“Residual ectoplasm from a Foran Demon.” Wong said. “Dissolved his clothes. Probably swallowed his head. I’ll have to go get it.” He again made gestures with his hands and the glow and stench disappeared.

“Anything we can do to help?” Scully asked.

Wong noticed her for the first time. “I’m afraid not, ma’am. Neither of your auras indicate that you are magic users... But they are both peppered with a sort of buckshot from the outer dimensions...” He looked at Mulder and Scully curiously. “Very strange. Perhaps some other time we could discuss it...”

Mulder shuffled his feet, “so, you’ve got this under control. You can get the head back and reattach it?”

“Almost certainly.”

“We could stay here and guard the body.” Mulder offered. 

Cloakie wrapped back around the Doctor possessively.

“Not necessary.” Wong said.

Mulder reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a card. “Well, we’ll just leave you to it then.”

He picked up his laptop bag and ushered Scully out to the foyer, “call if you need help.”

As Mulder and Scully shut the front door behind them, the sun was just peeking over the horizon.

“I would have liked to see how he reattached that head.” Scully said sullenly, “and your stealing of books is unconscionable!”

“Well, we’ll just see how powerful a wizard he really is. If he doesn’t notice they’re gone, I’ll mail them back.”

“And if an angry wizard comes looking for them?”

“I’ll sic you on him. You don’t believe in this hocus-pocus stuff anyway.”

Two days later Mulder was still pouring over the stolen books. They explained so much of what he and Scully had encountered over the years. The idea that things could slip between dimensions and that other things were simply a natural part of the planet itself were concepts he had heard before, but these two books were based on it. It gave an entirely new perspective of the paranormal. 

He was in his basement office at the FBI. His desk was overflowing with open files. He had a dozen other books out and was taking copious notes when Scully came in.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw you so engrossed in a book that didn’t have baseball stats in it.” She observed playfully. “Come on, it’s lunchtime and I need some air.”

Before Mulder could object, a glowing circle of light formed, became a ring throwing sparks, and a tall, dark haired man in robes and a flowing red cloak swept through.

It was obviously the Wizard of Bleecker Street, fully intact, fully clothed, at full power and clearly not in a pleasant frame of mind. His face was very grim. He looked at an open mouthed Scully and a stunned Mulder. “Agents Mulder and Scully, I presume.” The ring dissipated behind him. He pulled out one of Mulder’s chairs and offered it to Scully before claiming the other for himself. “I believe those are two books from my study.”

With his head restored and his whole body suffused with life, the man was truly striking. Turquoise eyes flashed in a high-cheekboned face. Jet black hair with silver at the temples swept back from a slight widows peak. Blue robes and black sashes covered his lithe form.

The cloak casually flipped Mulder off. Strange soothed it back with a touch.

“Ah, yes.” Mulder said guiltily. “I fully intended to return them...Looking down at the desk in distaste, Strange picked up another book. “The Mothman Chronicles?” He shook his head. “Keel was very close to the truth. The only thing I can really say in his favor is that he ceased chasing after alien phenomena and decided his best course of action was to completely ignore it. A perfectly rational conclusion.”

Mulder’s eyes had gone from their normal calm hazel to green and Scully could see he had gone from frightened to furious in the space of a heartbeat. “Some of us are not given that liberty.” He gestured to the file cases surrounding them. “When people need help, you’re suggesting I tell them to just ignore it and it will go away?”

Strange looked closely at Mulder and then turned to Scully. “Wong was right. Both your auras have been in regular contact with something not of this world. Your bodies are infused with it.” He looked up at the ’I want to Believe’ poster on the wall. “Billy Meier And his ‘beamships.’” He sighed and shook his head. “Jacques Vallée claimed UFO’s were from inner, rather than outer space. Closer to the truth, but still a loon. And then there was that money grubbing moron Adamski who tried to tie Tibet and occultism into the mess...”

“You occasionally work with the Avengers. They’ve got alien technology. They’ve been to other worlds. In Outer Space.” Mulder practically snarled. “We practically had an invasion over downtown Manhattan! People were killed. Buildings destroyed. All physical evidence seised by the government!” 

“And the portal over New York closed, leaving us nothing but that physical evidence to determine where they originated. Which we haven’t.” Strange calmly countered. “In this I can only speak from what the Avengers and what their outer space contacts have told us. But both of you have had direct contact with an entirely different species of alien. One that actually has been tinkering with the human genome for centuries. One that I would dearly love to remove from this cosmos.” Strange’s voice had become fascinated. “Oh, and here I though you were just another couple of whack job ‘experiencers’!”

“Try abductee.” Scully said in a voice that dripped ice.

Strange turned to her and his eyes softened as he took her hand gently. “What was done to you was a travesty. But you already know that our own government is involved.” Strange looked at Mulder “And your immediate family as well.” He got back to his feet and drew Scully with him. “Let’s go somewhere else to discuss this. I can detect eyes and ears all around us.” 

Mulder came out from behind his desk.

Strange began to make gestures with his hands and another glowing ring began to form. “Both of you like Italian, I take it?” 

The ring solidified and Mulder came up alongside Strange. He looked into the ring. “Is that Milan?” He asked in wonder.

“Yes! And one of my favorite places is not far from the Plaza.” He released Scully’s hand and gestured that she should step through, which she did.

Mulder looked at Strange and then walked through the portal which Strange closed behind himself.

Seconds later, the door to Mulder’s office was thrown open and Skinner charged in, the Smoking Man a few steps behind him.

“They’re not here.” Skinner said wonderingly.

“Contact the Avengers and tell them their wizard needs to kept on a tighter leash.”

“I was told in no uncertain terms that they have no say in what Doctor Stephen Strange says or does. He is not a member of their organization. ”

The Smoking man blew smoke from his mouth and nose. Fury radiated from him like heat from a furnace. “Let me know when they return.”

“Sir.” Skinner waited until the wraith of a man left the room and then the basement entirely.

‘Milan for lunch. Lucky bastards.’ Skinner smiled as he closed and locked the door.


End file.
